Changing diet key component to Tacko Fall's quest for an NBA contract

https://celticswire.usatoday.com/2019/09/09/changing-diet-key-component-to-tacko-falls-quest-for-an-nba-contract/





Mark J. Rebilas - USA TODAY Sports



Changing diet key component to Tacko Fall's quest for an NBA contract




By: Justin Quinn | September 9, 2019 11:06 am



It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that a 7-foot-6 man named Tacko eats a lot but it’s a challenge for anyone trying to make the NBA to eat healthy. And when you’re as tall as Boston Celtics camp signee Tacko Fall, eating well takes extra effort.

Yet, the Senegalese big man sticks to a healthy caloric intake in more than one sense of the word, which he discussed in a GQ interview with Alex Schultz earlier this summer, before he became the darling of Las Vegas Summer League.

That’s no easy task for the average man though, as Fall needs twice the calories most adult men should consume in a day.

“The recommendation is 6,000, which is obviously still a lot of food,” said the former UCF center. “It’s difficult to not just grab whatever you can.”

For Fall, who by his own admission struggled with his conditioning early in his basketball career to the point he had trouble bench pressing the bar, even without any weights:

“I started working out a bit that first year of high school, and then that summer when I played AAU, I was on a really good team and we had a good weightlifting program,” offered the Dakar native. “That’s when the competition picked up, and hanging out in that environment helped me too.”

Some of the difficulty with conditioning undoubtedly came simply from adapting to an entirely new food system for a player who’d spent his formative years in West Africa, as noted by Mandy Wettstein (via the Boston Globe’s Adam’s Himmelsbach).

Wettstein, whose family hosted Fall early in his time training in the United States, related that she once saw him eat three large pizzas and two garlic knots in just one sitting.

“I wish I could tell you we fed everyone salmon and quinoa,” she said. “But we didn’t. We had two ravenous teenage kids in the house who were discovering American junk food for the first time.”

“I left home I was 16; I was really close to my mom. I [had] never been away from my mom — she would never let me go out alone — and then all of a sudden I was out of the country, 6,000 miles away,” said the Celtics hopeful when discussing his adjustment to stateside life in an interview earlier this summer at the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Diet is a crucial component to training success, and the necessity of scaling up calorie requirements for a seven-foot-tall athlete is already a challenge. The former Knight also happens to be a Muslim, which means his diet has additional restrictions he needs to take into consideration when planning his breakfast:

“I was never really big on breakfast, but lately I’ve been trying to eat something in the mornings. I don’t eat pork, so whenever I can, I grab some turkey sausage or turkey bacon. A lot of fruits—grapes and bananas especially.”

When possible, Tacko took advantage of professional chefs popular with many NBA stars, though for players just starting their careers as he is, isn’t something that’s always available.

“For lunch, when I came to [Los Angeles] to train, we had a chef that would cook up some food. I’d just take whatever he has. He’d bring in different boxes and I’d eat whatever was inside the box. One box for lunch, and then a couple hours later, I’d eat again, and then do the same thing again.”

Should Fall fight his way onto the team’s final roster, he’ll secure a rookie minimum deal, which would go a long way to making such services affordable.

The difference in salary — nearly nine times what his current Exhibit 10 deal can pay him — would provide him with an invaluable tool towards his goal of becoming a legitimate rotation player in the NBA.

He’ll have to keep making strides in his conditioning and training though, as he’s facing even more competition for Boston’s final roster spot with the recent camp deal granted to Xavier standout Kaiser Gates to an already-crowded field contending for an NBA contract with the Celtics.

But between the intense interest in Fall from both fans and other franchises, and the effort he puts into his game — not to mention his diet — Tacko should be in good shape by the end of training camp.



bob
MY NOTE: It's a long haul to create quality muscle without getting slow and, if you can't go more than a few minutes without bending over and pulling down your shorts to breathe, you cannot compete at the NBA level. I don't think he's ready for this year, I don't see how he can be. His big mistake may be, if he doesn't make the Celtics, he goes to Maine and another team snaps him up. Sure, it'd be good for him to make an NBA team but that doesn't make him any more ready to be on that team. What he should do is dedicate this year to getting ready in the G-League. That's easy for me to say, I'm not the one who would be getting an NBA contract dangled in front of me, but that's what he should do. Work on your game, get ready for next year, make a team and earn minutes because you are ready.


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